The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 27

Illl VWCOI YIKMN. MONDAY. HY22.2(MO Bll Citytv gives public a voice LOWER MAINLAND B.C. Speakers Corner opens, up to 11 more on the way By HAYLEV MICK "A mm no-. Ji a Tons the middle of Vancouver's not-so-pedestrian-friendly industrial district but that hasn't discouraged people much.

Citytv's Bill Nevison was in charge of editing the dozens of Speakers Corner videos the station received since the booth was installed two weeks ago, and on Sunday gave The Vancouver Sun a sneak peek at some of those that will make it on the air. They range from the self-help variety confidence in yourself!" came from a self-professed former "blimp" who flipped up her shirt to slap her not-so-chubby belly), to silly think TV needs more purple!" shout purple-clad teens) to desperate pleas beautiful ladies call us!" came from a recently dumped stud bearing flowers, who was also willing to give out his name and phone number on television). Of course, not everyone makes it to the big time and a loonie doesn't guarantee a few seconds of fame. "I don't want to put just anything on the air," says Nevison. To choose the right clips for Speakers Corner takes thought, and it takes a vision.

Stoners and drunks are often funny enough to have entertainment value, but they don't make for responsible television. A sizable group of people wanted to talk about their beefs with Premier Gordon Campbell, but, for the sake of variety, Nevison had to weed out the repeats. And while the Vancouver station hasn't had any strip tease scenes or naughty copulation captured by the cameras, a similar Speakers Corner in Toronto has had its fair share, so Nevison is prepared indecent acts don't make the grade either. For those who can keep their clothes on and the content of their message relatively clean, spontaneous, and entertaining, there is a good chance they may see their Speakers Corner tirade on television. That's because Citytv plans to insert clips from Speakers Corner throughout its 24-hour programming plus a half hour show devoted to Speakers Corner that will air on Saturdays and Sundays beginning in a few weeks.

And soon Vancouver residents won't have to make their way over to 180 West Second Ave. to say their piece. As many as a dozen Speakers Corners will be distributed around the Lower Mainland sometime in August. Citytv will also use a portable Speakers Corner for festivals and community events making Vancouver a city with more Speakers Corner locations than any other in Canada. New VI in Victoria the only other CHUM-owned station in B.C has a Speakers Corner too.

It was launched in October 2001 and at least 100 people a day plop a toonie in the meter. While Victoria residents have to pay more to get on their soapbox (a toonie instead of a loonie in Vancouver), it's all for a good cause all the proceeds from Speakers Corner go to local charities. And according to New VI assignment editor Stuart Adam-son, it has been a popular way for community groups to get their messages out about fundraising projects. Not to mention a popular place for a rock band or actors looking for their next big break and perhaps a repeat of the Barenaked Ladies' rise to fame: they were noticed on the original Speakers Corner outside the CHUM-owned specialty music channel based in Toronto Much Music. "They just get to say what they want," Adamson said, "And there's a good chance it'll make it on TV if they say something that relates to what's going on in the world or their community." Take a deep breath and clear your throat.

Speakers Corner has arrived in Vancouver. It's a coin-operated "video soapbox" television's answer to a letter to the editor. Insert a loonie into the Speakers Corner booth and express your two cents worth on whatever subject comes to mind. And if you're eloquent enough, or engaging enough, or just plain funny enough Citytv will put your rant on television for all its viewers to see. The idea is the brainchild of CHUM which today officially launches Citytv on the channel previously occupied by CKVU 13.

And Vancouverites have a lot to say. Citytv's Speakers Corner booth, located at the Citytv building on the corner of West Second and Columbia has already been bustling for the past couple weeks. The location isn't exactly prime two booths located smack in Speakers Corner has arrived at the new Citytv studios (formerly CKVU) in Vancouver. It costs a loonie, but speakers may get on television and money collected goes to local charities. Global shrugs off challenge from Znaimer's Citytv attempt to appropriate the old BCTV brand) creates a brand confusion that he believes plays into his hands.

Global, meanwhile, has hung on to BCTV for its news programming while oth-erwise using the Global BC brand. "The public will smudge all that in their head," he says. And that will only help distinguish Citytv Vancouver. "What we now have is a marketplace that has a Crown corporation, two big, national, general-ist networks and us. We're the local, independent alternative." Steve Wyatt, general manager for market leader Global BC, as we did in Victoria," Znaimer says with his typical candour.

In the meantime, the Vancouver station will compensate by trying to be on the street as much as possible. It has upped its rolling stock of remote broadcast trucks to 16 and is installing a dozen "Speaker's Corner" video kiosks around the city. Despite these and other adjustments, having spent 20 often heartbreaking years trying to get Citytv into Vancouver, Znaimer likes the way his brand stands out in today's marketplace. CTV's adoption of the moniker "BC-CTV" (in an apparent laughs off that suggestion. "BCTV News has a huge amount of equity in this province, and Global has a lot of strength on the entertainment programming side, so we're leveraging both," he says.

But when it comes to hard audience numbers over the long term, programming is king. In fact Wyatt believes viewers have already worked their way through the brand confusion and will gravitate toward the best lineup of shows. "The viewers aren't stupid. They know what they like and once they know where it is they'll stick to it," he says. mal backdrops and downtown studios.

CKVU, founded around the same time as Citytv, borrowed aspects of the Citytv model over its various incarnations. And when Baton Broadcasting (now CTV) set up VTV in 1998, network head Ivan Fecan (who cut his teeth at Citytv in Toronto) emulated it with a storefront studio and a focus on the young, urban market. Znaimer puts it more bluntly: "He pretended to do a local channel, and he did mine. He took the call letters on our application, he took the site I had scouted, and they pretended to be us." But VTV still failed in Znaimer's eyes to replicate Citytv because, as he repeats, "you can't be local if you're not independent." (Though owned by an increasingly national media company, Citytv is independent in the sense that there is From Bl For that, Znaimer makes no apologies. "Market research doesn't tell you much about the next thing," he quips.

The Citytv brand, virtually unchanged from the Citytv he developed in Toronto and since licensed to broadcasters in Barcelona, Bogota and Helsinki, is the result of his own entrepreneurial vision, he says. "Some of it was a reflection of my tastes, some of it was my sense of what was missing in the marketplace, some of it was a function of my means available. It costs a lot of money to do old-fashioned television." The content and the team that brings it to the screen will be different in Vancouver, but the brand and the philosophy behind it will be exactly the same, Znaimer says. He believes the approach is just as relevant in Vancouver in 2002 as it was in Toronto in 1972. "It's not a Toronto idea; it's a good idea." This is the second rebranding exercise in a year for CKVU, which became a hot potato in the forge of a wholesale realignment of the Vancouver television scene.

Triggered in the late 1990s by the disintegration of WIC Western International Communications, the takeover of CTV by Baton Broadcasting (and later Bell Canada Enterprises) and the CRTC's decision to grant a clutch of new TV licences in the Vancouver-Victoria marketplace, every private broadcaster changed owners and network affiliations in the course of three years. For viewers, it all came to a head last September, when mar ket leader BCTV became Global BC, VTV became BC-CTV and Global's U.TV reverted to its call letters CKVU pending CRTC approval of its acquisition by Znaimer's CHUM Ltd. That approval was granted in October, and the deal between CHUM and Canwest Global closed on Nov. 1. Shortly thereafter, CHUM brought in a new general manager in the person of Brad Phillips.

Phillips came to the scene from radio. A former program director for Z95.3 FM, he more recently ran CHUM's namesake radio station in Toronto and had returned to Vancouver as a self-employed media consultant. Some media watchers lamented the trashing of U.TV, a brand that Canwest had invested heavily in during the 1990s and which had good viewer recognition against its larger, more established rivals. But Znaimer feels that brand equity had already been squandered by the time CHUM arrived on the scene. "The channel has had a confused identity to begin with," says Znaimer, who is slated to appear on today's inaugural Breakfast Television broadcast in bed with a couple of Playboy Playmates.

(The show will also give a nod to CKVU's history with a segment on the 1970s-era Vancouver Show, hosted by now-Senator Laurier Lapierre.) However strong the U.TV brand might have been, Znaimer believes Citytv is stronger. Its strength is evident in the fact that it means something even to people who have never once watched a Citytv broadcast. It's known as the instigator for most of the innovations in Canadian newscasts in recent years, such as moving cameras, infor Come see the original skyscrapers. no national network programming.) Hence the value in demonstrating to viewers and advertisers that Citytv Vancouver is going to be the real thing. One way in which Citytv Vancouver diverges from the model, however, is in its location.

The CKVU studio on 2nd Avenue is hardly the high-traffic, downtown, storefront space that virtu-ally every Citytv and even CHUM's "The New VI" in Victoria is. (The New VI represents the small-market version of the Citytv formula that CHUM operates there and in several Ontario cities.) That will change, but not for a few years yet. "It's a well-known fact we paid an enormous amount of money for that frequency CKVU, and we've got to dig ourselves out of that hole. There isn't the money available to build the new facility yfiiv More than 20 ol he legendary Tall Ships are gathering lor a Maritime I 'estiva I in the historic village ol Slcvcston. There vvill he Inn, lood, and entertainment lor the whole lainilv I'lns, xou'll be able to hoard and explore llie ships in port.

As llielimoiul is great lor hiking, ue recommend that von cycle or Park and Hide. Transl ink will be running extra buses due to limited parking at the festival. The I -'estival is Iree and tickets, required lor on board ship viewing, are on sale now. Comedic co-hosts failed to click I US perspective." And Citytv's centrepiece, the signature Speakers Corner which Phillips calls, "the original reality show" promises to give everyone the chance to have their say and be seea New multicultural programs include the weekly half-hour talk show diverseCity, which promises to examine "the real-life experiences of Vancouver's second-and third-generation multicultural population." Ethnosonic promises to reflect the world music scene with Vancouver DJ-turned-VJ Trevor Chan, while CityCooks hopes to explore culture through cuisine, by taking "an anthropological look at flavours and food trends from across the city and around the world." Tonight's CityPulseNews debut will feature an interview with Pamela Anderson by Citytv enter-tainment reporter Darrin Maharaj, who sat down with Anderson at her Los Angeles home to discuss her career, her life with musician Kid Rock and her recent struggle with hepatitis C. Breakfast Television will raise the curtain with local wheelchair athlete Rick Hansen, a reunion of some of the actors from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and reminiscences of The Vancouver Show, the show that put CKVU TV on the map in the station's early days.

Phillips is naturally bullish on Citytv's prospects. "We think Citytv can change the way people in Vancouver watch television, and the way they get involved with it," Phillips said. "We have a lot of stories to tell." RICHMOND TALL SHIPS August 8th to 12th 2002 Inhumation: ua'ich mondial Isl i ips.ca or l-N6( 2c4 SUM' ticketmaster 004 Jso 4444 or www.licketmaster.ca From Bl city's life. Beginning today, it will be up to viewers to decide if Citytv is right for Vancouver, or Vancouver right for Citytv. To that end, station manager Brad Phillips promises 29 hours of local programming every week, much of that news and information programming focusing on community and municipal affairs.

Beginning today, Breakfast Television will kick off each weekday with what its producers promise will be "an irreverent, affectionate look at the city as it springs to life." Viewers who circled the calendar in anticipation of today's Breakfast Television debut will notice one change when the curtain rises on Vancouver's latest early-morning gabfest: The four hosts originally intended to ride herd over the three-hour program have been whittled down to two: former urban rush hosts Michael Eckford and Fiona Forbes. One-time Double Exposure hosts Linda Cullen and Bob Robertson, who were initially penciled in to join Eckford and Forbes as Breakfast hosts, stepped aside because the chemistry wasn't quite there during rehearsals, according to Citytv spokeswoman Susan Kerschbaumer. Citytv's revamped newscast, CityPulseNews, will be "thorough, immediate, and incisive," its producers say, "offering unprecedented coverage with an unbuttoned 'Due to nanow fjanplanks and steep Minus people with mobility issues will not bo able to board the vhips However, there will be a spedal viewing area set aside 0:1 eaili dock from 9 10 a ni Indav to Suodav i 1 A diverse lineup The shows: Breakfast Television, launches today (weekdays, 6 a.m. 9 a.m. Hosts: Michael Eckford and Fiona Forbes, with Simi Sara in news.

CityPulse News, launches today (every day, 6 p.m.) Weekday anchor: Russ Froese. Weekend anchor: Benita Ha CityPulse Tonight, launches today (weeknights, 11 p.m.) Anchor: Monika Deol diverseCity, debuts Sept. 29 (Sundays, 7.30 p.m.) Global Stevi'Mim Hjrhotir Authority Host: Prem Gill Ethnosonic, debuts Sept. 7 (Saturday, Sundays, noon) Host: Trevor Chan CityCooks, debuts Aug. 26 (weekdays, noon) Host: Simi Sara Great Movies, Late Great Movies, Baby Blue Movies, beginning today (weekdays, 1 p.m., 9 p.m.

except Wednesdays midnight; weekends, 4 p.m., 9 p.m., midnight, 2 a.m.) Speakers Corner (Saturday, Sundays, 3 p.m.) FRRSER P0RT CASINOS lruviiHk TlllVM(lIRSlV Em.